Convert PNG to GIF via Command Line

I installed a bare bones Arch Linux system today and took a screenshot. With no graphics utilities installed, I needed a way to convert a PNG to a GIF for a Simple Machines forum template thumbnail. I figured I’d use a command line utility to help me and ImageMagick is installed by default on most distributions. A quick read through the ImageMagick manpage and I found the convert command and thought I’d share it with everyone. Use convert in the following fashion: convert [input-options] input-file [output-options] output-file

This did a quick, same-size conversion with little loss for me to display the thumbnail online. For more information on the options I used and other options that I didn’t use, take a peek at the ImageMagick Online Help Page for convert.

12 thoughts on “Convert PNG to GIF via Command Line”

It’s funny…when you use KDE and Gnome a lot you forget about many of these command line options that are just VERY powerful and quick. I had totally forgotten about convert and you’re 100% right…it’s handy in batch jobs as well 🙂 Very handy for script writing 😛